Peargirl VI The Online Zine Edition April 2008 -all material is copyright of Sarah Haxby and may not be reproduced without permission -thank you!

After much reading, research and spinning the bottle I’ve put together 4 submissions to literary agents representing children’s authors… wish me luck! Statistically speaking it is more difficult to get a literary agent than a publishing contract as an unknown author… but I must try, try and try again.

… currently working on the start of a novel chapter instead of another short story… here’s a visual interlude

Full Measure

 by Sarah Haxby 

—————————————–

watching the winter sun

on low-slung glances

pierce the sky

easily consumed

in shatter whites

nestled in my shadowed hollow

clip-winged

excavating last years returns

&

receipts

fingering spent ticket stubs and obsolete invoices

tabulating

the un-incubated longings

of the undone past

unable to peregrinate

past the idleness of tumescent disappointment

decompostable

but for the splinter

of avian

day dream

awaiting fuel

to

flee

fly

flight

excoriate

the detritus from the emeritus

charge wing-hearted

out into the golden pockets

past the horizon line

wandering sharp-eyed

innocent through

a clutch of cliche

&

heart shaped

shorn sleeves

ascendant

of the loss of nothing gained

………………………………………

Sadly the gnome refuge in Styal was forced to move as it was considered too much of a distraction to people driving on the country lane… the gnome refuge of Styal was moved to an undisclosed private location, as most people don’ t want people tromping through their yards. http://www.wilmslowexpress.co.uk/news/s/1020145_gnome_place_like_home_is_moved_on

But here’s a gnome reserve with a difference!

I haven’t been to this gnome reserve yet, but I’d like to see another place where gnomes roam free…

there’s no place like a gnome place!

The Gnome Reserve & Wild Flower Garden

-this isn’t fiction -it’s real! I can’t write

 today, I’m skipping about with the local

gnomes!

for more information:

http://www.gnomereserve.co.uk/index.htm

The Gnome Reserve
West Putford
Nr Bradworthy
N Devon
EX22 7XE

tel 01409 241435
fax 08715 227633

e-mail info@gnomereserve.co.uk

This is my story for April 12^th, 13^th,  14^th, and 15^th  -as  it’s taken me four days to write and rough-edit thist…the word program crashing repeatedly didn’t help either!

 It’s another brand new story, and no doubt in need of more editing, but part of this blog-a-day is the inner editor pushing me to get it out there rather than shoving it into a drawer.

Intro:

“The concept of the mythological animal in the form of a horse known in Scotland as the ‘kelpie’ or each-uisge, in Wales as ceffyl y dwr, is common to all the Celtic countries… He is identical with the kelpie of Scottish tradition and the phoocah (puca) of the Irish”

Folklore of Wales by Anne Ross, 2001, Tempus Publishing House

Looking at my guide to Welsh pronunciation I’ll hazard a guess that the ceffyl y dwr is pronounced kef-UL-ih- doo-ER… for f is v as in dove, a double ff means a ‘real’ f sound… I enjoy hearing Welsh and seeing Welsh, but I’m having a difficult time jamming the two separate components together. What does seem to fit for me is being inspired by Welsh myth and fairytale to come up with a new story about the old Water Horse.

…And All the Way Back Again…A Water Horse Tale

By Sarah Haxby

Part One

Having been away from my small home town for a year I was already in a strangely nostalgic frame of mind as I wandered up the road, narrow by Canadian standards, but not in terms of Welsh standards. I realized that I was viewing the place as a tourist might, or a less than prodigal daughter, having achieved little academically during a year abroad, but feeling much more accomplished and worldly, my horizons having been broadened, if not my intellect-expanded; at least not by the school. I believe the country itself had effected me in some un-measurable fashion. They say that Wales can get into your blood, and as some of my ancestors had been Welsh, perhaps that old blood had just been stirred.

At first I had been so homesick when I had left Canada I had only wanted to come home, but now, after leaving Wales to come home I had wanted just a little more time, to myself if I couldn’t stay in Wales, and so I had landed on the far-side of the Canada and spent a week taking the time to see my country, from sea to sea, for the first time. Now that I was home, surrounded by the familiar semi-rural wilderness, I missed my connection to the old folded Cambrian stones of Wales, the hills and the thicket hedgerows that had been sculpted and walked upon for so many centuries, every inch touched by human hands. Wales was so very different from the wild beauty of Canada.

The untended park on my left, which was really a stand of wild trees growing in a swamp, contrasted the houses hidden behind high fences and tall homogenous shrubbery on my right, which were all looking much the same as when I had left a year before. Looking up at the large-leafed maple trees just beginning to turn brown in the premature cold drizzle of rain, instead of seeing hoped-for-yellow that had tipped the leaves the day before on my arrival I reminded myself that a year before the leaves had been about to change colour when I had been packing to leave. Now that I was unpacking to stay I was as nervous about what I was to do now that I was back, and that perhaps I should laugh at myself because I am now more nervous about what I might accomplish by staying here at home as I had been about my original reasons for going.

Was I the same, or different? The black asphalt crumble that turned into compacted dirt shoulder was the same as ever. Cars drove past, the cars of home: larger than the cars abroad, producing just as much exhaust, and driving well-over the speed limit with as much abandon as in Wales, only there are no sheep to dodge in my hometown, only deer, and though less frequently on the road, the results are usually more dramatic… I sighed and thought of the lovely long walks that could be had in Wales climbing over stiles and fences marked with symbols that allowed ramblers passage. Walking carefully over the grates in the roads, carefully pushing through overgrown hedgerows, though there were few of those. The Welsh really know how to keep a good hedge row.

At the top of the road, before it turned sharply into a corner to run up the seven hills, the church parking lot was full of cars. Preparations for the funeral of Jimmy McTrael were in progress. All the old-timers in the community had turned up to say goodbye to Jimmy and to support his father, Dan, who was taking the loss of his seventeen year old son as hard as a body can imagine. Dan and Jimmy had been father and son, best friends and an ‘odd couple’ living together as bachelor kin since Jimmy’s mother ran off with that suit for a life in a glass and concrete tower in the city. Word had come back to the town how she liked her new concrete and marble-skinned foyer with the  security cameras, the elevator up to the twenty-second floor and all the sense that she was more where she deserved to be than ever Dan McTrael could give her with his small house set in the woods, with the toilet that sometimes fussed up –delicate septic systems were common in town- and an electric heater that once started up with a dead mouse in it, as that’s where the neighbour’s cat had left its gift. The cat was only asking if it could move in with them, Dan knew that, but his wife didn’t think it was funny. Nothing was funny our small town, so she left; the cat moved in, and Dan and Jimmy learned the ways of being a family of two. They never said anything bad about Jimmy’s mother; they didn’t say much about her at all. The rest of the townsfolk had probably used up all the words.

I’d only arrived the night before, so I was excused from attending the funeral, but now, as I walked towards the church, I wondered if I was going to be going in or not. I didn’t want to shift the event towards being about me coming home, because everyone would want to welcome me home and ask me how I was, and I didn’t want to become the centre of attention at Jimmy’s funereal,  but nor did I want to be disrespectful by staying away. I’d never really been friends with Jimmy. He never said much unless you knew how to take apart a chainsaw with him, or some-such guy-domain thing. But I knew Jimmy, had gone to school with him, though he was several years younger than me. He was part of the community. He was part of the town, and that made him part of me. I might not have much faith in the church, but if I ever lose the knowing of the importance of community, then I will be lost. Maybe that’s why I’m so unsettled today. I’ve been root-bound, wrapped in burlap, afraid I might root in the new place, feeling my hometown roots nibble away at, in the being away for a year; not knowing if I should root in Wales or not. Maybe I am just suffering some sort of transplant-shock. Like plants odd, and that explained why I felt all wilted.  They say it’s a good thing, to travel, and I suppose it is. But I’m still not certain it’s made me a better person than I would have been had I stayed at home…what have I gained? Perspective? The ability to look at the unfamiliar and to navigate through the unknown, and then to look back on the familiar and find it overlaid with a strangeness? To come home and not know if I should go to a funereal, whereas if I’d stayed I would know my place, and be at home getting ready, instead of wandering over in the early grey drizzle to moon about in wonderment and indecision.

Poor Jimmy, he’ll never have a chance to go abroad now. His life is too-soon over, and though I’ve heard some of the rumours as to how it happened, the why will remain a mystery. I look at my wrist watch, and figure I still have an hour to decide.

The new wing on the church looks strange to me: dreamlike, as though I was imagining it, because it was the only new thing I had seen since arriving home. The new part of the building had been constructed during the year I was gone, to accommodate community events. The original church, where the services were held was old and small, the new wing was like an tacked-on extra arm, running at a right angle from the top of the church, larger by twice than the actual church, this new addition had so many windows, the top half of the walls being all window. I’d be able to see right through it when the curtains were open. Only a little bit of curtain was open, and I could see people placing chairs, carrying white flowers, trays of food, boxes, ribbons, signs, boards that probably had collages of photos of Jimmy’s life stuck all over them. The light inside looked too bright, and too yellow in contrast to the greyness of the day. Fog lingered at the tops of trees and cottoned the church’s modest bell tower. Attenuated hanks of cloud drifted on the ground, damply settling in the grass, uncertain whether to rise or fall; unnameable as being somewhere between fallen cloud and lingering fog.

I looked at the shoes I was wearing, they were sensible enough, waterproof walking shoes I had purchased at one of the many 70% off ‘going out of business again’ sales in the UK. These shoes had now walked in two countries. Back in the old world of Wales, on the slate sidewalks where a paving stone really is a large slab of stone, and now here, where sidewalks are reconstituted poured concrete if you’re in the city, but are more likely to be a mix of gravel and mud, or just a path through the grass around these parts. I turn to the left and wander away from the asphault  -perhaps I should say tarmac- road to the narrow gravel trail that led through the old apple orchard trees to the small farm behind the church. Once it had been a real farm, but these days, after generations of division and the city growing closer to the town, it had been whittled down to a hobby farm, and a subdivision of land with a bit left-over for a horse paddock. There isn’t even a real barn, just a shelter and a couple of fenced in green areas for a few rich-girls’ ponies to hang out with some llamas that a local artist owned. Standing in the centre of the field was Jimmy’s killer.

A tall, beautiful blue-grey roan horse without a name who had turned up in the field, uninvited, a few weeks before, dripping of water and seaweed as though he’d been swimming in the ocean and then followed the river upstream until the stream turned into more of a trickle that ran behind the church lands. Someone had put the horse in the paddock, not knowing what else to do with him. There were no other horses nearby, all the old farms had been converted into animal-less developments except for a few chickens which the new residents always complained about. No one had any idea who the horse belonged to, and the ocean was a good distance away. The river was just  a small stream running through a corner of the paddock, and it was a mile or two before it turned into the river that met the sea. People had made their guesses, but neither the Good Samaritan who had presumably led the lost horse into the paddock, or the owner, came forward to tell their part of the story. The owners of the ponies fretted over the extra expense of the roan, but the locals snorted with derision at their cheapness, and the locals raised some funds from amongst the most generous, which were usually those with the smallest annual incomes, to feed the horse. The mystery horse didn’t seem to need food. He wouldn’t let anyone near him, but he wouldn’t leave, either. And then Jimmy had gotten into the plot the wrong-way.

Jimmy’s house was an old cabin up in the woods behind the horse fields. He told his Dad he wanted to ride the horse. His father said it wasn’t a good idea until they knew who the horse belonged to. Jimmy said he’d wait, but the longing grew inside him. Jimmy drove his small truck past the field every day, he told all his friends what he had told his Dad, and mostly they repeated the wisdom of what his father had said, except for the few who had said that they too wished they could ride the horse. One day Jimmy must have decided to ride the horse, for one of the little girls who was looking after her pony in the far field said she saw the horse and Jimmy fly straight up into the air, above the tree-tops, and then Jimmy had fallen and she had run to get her mummy. The horse, presumably, had come back down to earth of its own accord. When Jimmy had fallen, he had broken his back and died, according to the doctor’s, quite instantly, possibly before he had even hit the ground as he had been thrown so violently.

It was a shame, people were saying, that the horse that killed Jimmy was still standing in the field behind the church, but that’s just the way of how things were.

…And All the Way Back Again…A Water Horse Tale

By Sarah Haxby

Part Two

I was less than halfway across the rough field that led to the paddocks when I stopped, not because the long, coarse dead grass was catching in my shoes, or because the ruts and mud were slowing me down, or the rain, which had begun to come down harder, had soaked through the tops of my shoulders right through a rain-jacket and the wool cardigan beneath, but because I couldn’t move. My animal self trembled. My flight or fight instinct was on red alert, goose bumps thrilling from the nape of my neck to prickle around my chest, my arms, my legs. I trembled a little as an unearthly sense of being watched halted me.

I raised my eyes and saw that the large stallion was staring at me, not as a horse should look at a human, from one side or another of their great long skulls, but straight ahead. We looked at each other forehead to forehead, as only predators and humans do. His great black eyes looked into me, focused on me with an intensity that brought out a flash of cold sweat so that I was now damp inside and out I felt as though he had been waiting for me. His gaze did not waver. I shook my head to break the stare, my eyes watering a little at the intensity.

“I’m not afraid of you.” I muttered to myself, the words falling from my mouth seemed to help break whatever spell was holding me immobilized. The words seemed ridiculously hollow. And false. The horse didn’t blink. It just seemed to grow a bit taller, but perhaps that was only because my mind was translating the perspective, and the fact that the horse was well over twenty-one hands high, tall as a Shire horse, muscled and proud-chested like a draught horse, his hooves feathered like a Clydesdale’s, but black, matching his mane and his dark-grey-black face. The neck and body of the horse, especially in the rainy mist, were hard to focus on. A grey-white over a darker grey that might have been a black gave the animal the illusion of being a bit blue-tinged, or a creature of the fog. The Welsh would call him glas, a word that now just means blue in the modern sense, but in the older times had meant the colour of living things in a spectrum that ranged through landscape colours to the greys and blues of the sea. I knew just enough about horses to call him a blue roan and that nothing about him was common. This horse looked as though it belonged in a tale from Wales. Whatever was it doing here in small-town Canada?

Without thought my body, perhaps wishing to preserve itself from further mystery, turned itself around and I found myself walking away from the horse and the paddock. I would never have tried to ride the horse; I had just wanted to see what had killed Jimmy, as though that would help me to understand how someone so young could die so easily. My parents had told me ‘you’ll never believe that horse,’ and they were right. I had gone to try to understand how Jimmy’s life had ended so easily, but found that upon looking at the horse that nothing in my life was ever going to make sense ever again .My mind was spinning, I was trying to push the presence of the massive horse from my mind, but it was impossible. The great horse was implausible. It shouldn’t exist, and definitely shouldn’t be son interested in me. I shook my head again and decided I should go to the funereal, to pay my last respects to Jimmy who had been brave and foolish enough to get on the back of this unbelievable animal. Also: being surrounded by humans and solid walls seemed more sensible than standing in fields surrounded by mist and notions of old-world magic.

As I walked briskly towards the church I heard a noise, or an absence of noise similar to the silence that suppresses sound after a heavy snowfall. I glanced behind me. The horse was suspended in mid-air, or so it appeared, as though time was in abeyance. He was easily leaping over the fence, looking as though he were ascending the air. Despite his great size his jump was effortless even though the paddock fence was higher than the average farm-fence as it had been designed to keep deer from getting in. Local deer could generally jump the height of an average man.

I began to walk faster, fear making me scuttle with expedited efficiency to the unpainted back fence of the churchyard. I climbed over the back fence of the church, my gloves wetted and slimed by the green algae covering the old silvered cedar boards. My pant leg caught ungracefully on the peak of the fence board and a piece tore off. I was almost ‘hoisted on my own petard’ but made it over with a nice green and wet mark up the inside of one pant-leg. After flailing through the thinly planted young privacy hedge-row I lunged across the low-maintenance pea-gravelled back yard and flung open the back door to the new wing of the church hall, glad that the church doors were still left unlocked.

The bright light of the room and the respectfully muted greetings mixed with a few louder ones disoriented me for a moment. “How was Wales?” Mrs.Gershom boomed, advancing with a bundle of white chrysanthemums. It appeared as though there was a surge of people coming towards me, familiar faces smiling as much as they dared over plates of sandwiches covered in plastic wrap, just whisked away from the sandwich making table which was just finishing up, half a dozen people, including the minister, were coming to say how sorry they were and to welcome me back, simultaneously. Just as swiftly as they began to come towards me, they started back, retreating -looks of uncomprehending shock on their faces.

…And All the Way Back Again…A Water Horse Tale

By Sarah Haxby

Part Three

I must have left the door open behind me, or the horse could open push bars, for the great silver horse had stuck his head in the door. The first thing anyone saw was the large horse eating off a plate loaded with freshly made, perfectly stacked, crustless cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches that were just about to be covered over. The large square teeth seemed to grin demonically as it chewed the sandwiches in quick easy mouthfuls, the soft, malleable horse lips wrinkling back in a teeth-baring momentary grin.

Then the sound of the horse’s hooves landed one and then two, echoing in new wood-laminate and glass room. Someone shouted ‘cover the coffin!’ another muttered ‘is this a joke?’ another ‘thank goodness Dan isn’t here yet.’  -all speaking as I had, heedless of common sense, for the sense of the horse tended to take over the space and energy of the room.

“I’m sorry!” I think I bleated before I hurried across the hall to the other fire exit. I slammed the door behind me, but was unsurprised when I heard the door open behind me and could sense/smell/ken that the great horse was still following me. Unlike me, however, the great beast was in no hurry. It was me, the lesser beast, who began to run.

I ran out of the church yard, through the arched gate and into the park paths. The horse walked behind me, I imagined he was easily jumping over the picket fence, though I didn’t stop to look this time. In a blind panic I ran and ran until I was out of breath. A stitch in my side stopped me with a brand of pain. My were muscles sore, ankles and knees in a jelly after having been hammered so hard against the uneven and muddy ground. A swoon of jet lag was catching up to me before my breath did. As I continued to wobble forwards I realized the full measure of my folly as the brief vision of my bag with my mobile –cellphone, we’d say back home- but I was home, now… in any case, the bloody thing was still in my room, it had been unpacked and left with everything else in my room to be dealt with later. I had only wanted to go out for a little stroll, to think about going to Jimmy’s service after all.

Now I was alone, and even worse, where exactly was I?  Empty-pocketed and empty-headed I had run into the park, which was really a slightly muddy forest with paths through it. The paths were empty because it was early, so there would be few visitors on a day like today and besides, everyone would be making ready to go to Jimmy’s funereal. If anyone from the church hall had followed me I doubted they would have known which way I had gone, nor had they running shoes on, and there were a dozen branches in the path to look at before the gravel ran out and turned into dirt and mine, -at least the horse’s tracks would have been visible… maybe. But who in that group would have come after me? What if they though I was a vision? A ghost! I shook my head. It was far too early in the day to go this mad. I hadn’t even had a cup of tea yet!

The horse walked on steady, unshod feet –his large hooves flattening large sword ferns, and fallen branches in a convincing snap and crunch. He was leaving deep prints in the mud, gravel, leaf and pine-needle-covered path. He walked up to me, placed his face near to mine. I flinched away, not knowing what to expect. The horse blew gently in my face, exhaling and inhaling at the same time, scenting me and blowing a salty and cucumber-y horse-y breath my way. It snorted a little as though bemused. As though to say: well, what did you expect?

I raised my hand slowly, holding it flat. The gesture was ignored. The horse pushed towards me, pressing his long, heavy-boned face into my back, somewhat turning me with a nudge so I was again facing away from him and looking at an old growth stump. The horse went to stand beside the stump. The message was clear; I was to use the stump so I could climb onto the horses back. I shook my head and walked further into the woods as I was certain I would not be able to get past the horse to go back the way I came. Besides, in stopping I’d reoriented myself and knew where I was. I’d walked these paths since I was a child and knew that the trail I was on wound its way to the lake, which was where the stream turned into the river, beyond the dam, and that the trail which led to the dam turned into a service road which reconnected with the main road just past the dam. It was a forty minute walk.

Turning my back on the horse and walking away took a great deal of courage, but less courage than it took to look into his great, dark eyes.

The horse followed me, nudging me each time we came to an old stump, which was frequently, because the entire park had once been logged, and all the trees were second-growth trees, the oldest being just over a century. It is amazing how quickly terror can turn into annoyance as the sense of threat diminished slightly. I know knew the horse wanted something from me, something I could choose to do, or to not do. Surely it couldn’t force me to get on his back. I tried not to think too much about its teeth, or the weight and power behind its hooves -or how Jimmy’s ride had ended.

I persisted in walking along, ignoring the shoves and nudges to my shoulders and back, to the snorts and whickers of the great blue horse. At one point, when the beast stopped beside a particularly well-situated stump, I ignored him and continued trudging, he let loose a neigh that sounded impossibly loud in my ears, yet in my heart I knew was only a fraction of the volume at his command. The great horse seemed quite disappointed in me, and that pleased me, for it meant that in someway I still had some power over him. I hesitated but a fraction, and wouldn’t allow myself to look back, even if the distance between us now allowed for him to charge me if he wished, instead of just pushing me about. To my left the hill sloped up into rocks and larger trees, to my right it sloped down into prickly berry bushes and the confusion a fallen alder tree had caused, as the broken tree was half dead and half alive, lying in a tangle of salmonberry, salal and blackberry bushes. Not the best of landing spots, but I readied myself to hurl myself off the side of the path just in case my sense of having some sort of upper-hand over the horse proved inaccurate.

After the stamp of a hoof the footfalls of the horse resumed a walking gait. If the centuries of pine needles and fallen leaves hadn’t layered such a soft blanket of soil on the forest floor I’m certain the tremors would have shivered right up my spine. The rain was lessening, which was a relief, but it was difficult to tell if the rain had ceased altogether because all the rainwater which had been caught by the hundreds of branches, nestled in between pine cones, dripping from leaves, continued to fall in erratically placed heavier droplets as the trees shed the accumulated water, and if the rain was lessening, the mist surrounding the lake ahead was thickening. It was often misty around the old lake, which had been enlarged twice during its history. The first time was just over two centuries ago when settlers dammed the lake, flooded the area and killed the standing trees around the lake that they hadn’t bothered to chop down, leaving them to die and rot as they would. Perhaps it had been assumed that the trees would just rot and fall down, perhaps it hadn’t mattered to the dam builders, for long  ago, just building a dam that size: the mixing and pouring enough concrete to make a twenty-foot high damn, over one hundred and twenty feet long was perhaps enough work. In any case the trees, at least the cedars, had remained standing. The needles had fallen from the branches, and then the winter snows snapped off the branches each year until all that remained was a spear-like encircling of tall, dead, silver trees around the lake. The dead silver trees were particularly haunting when threaded through by the perpetual mists of the lake, especially in the one corner of the lake where an active bog bubbled and misted the far side of the lake even on the nicest of days. The bog was said to be haunted, that an old woman had drowned trying to find an animal that had been lost from her farm on the day the dam had been completed. She had been caught in the rising waters and then drowned in the bog.

As a child I’d wondered which animal the old woman had followed into the bog… now, a new thought occurred. Perhaps she had been pushed. I stopped as though the thick fog was a solid wall. I couldn’t see through the fog to the lake, or to the road in the distance. Everything was eerily quiet. There was no one in the distance calling my name. No sounds of traffic from the road. No animals-of the forest making comforting rustling noises. It was me, my breath, a little shallow and perhaps edging closer to hyper-ventilating. . The breathing of the horse. Steady.  I tried to slow my breath, and then realized that I had inadvertently matched my breath to that of the horse’s. I looked behind me, the horse was still staring straight at me in his still-disconcertingly human fashion. I looked at a stump that lay just above the hill behind me and wondered that he had not tried to nudge me towards it. Perhaps he had given up on trying to get me to ride him. Perhaps the mist was the next test of my courage.

To enter that milky blindness on any average rain-coast autumn day was a challenge. Today I had a horse following me, a horse that would disappear in a much lighter fog, for he was almost the same colour as that ethereal element. Only the darkness of his face and feet would remain as darker shadows in the mist

The horse turned its head to look at the stump which lay behind him, and then regarded me once more. I shook my head and turned away once more, stepping into the thicker fog, trusting my feet to stay on the path. One. I counted, and then tried for  two. Two steps into the fog. Don’t panic, it’s only fog. One. Two. Echoed the horse’s hooves.  Three. I couldn’t tell myself it was only a horse, for certainly it was something more than a horse. Four….. after thirty-four steps the fog began to thin and I saw a large rock by the edge of the lake and was glad to be able to see it. Above the sun shone at an angle turning the greyness of the fog a little golden. The lightness continued  and the fog thinned and I stopped a moment to adjust to the brightness of the sun and the unusual effect of finding a sort of calm ‘eye’ in the middle of the fog. I could see a few feet out into the lake, and more of the trees on the hillside, which was at its steepest. This was the part of the trail that occasionally flooded when the water was too much for the new damn and overflowed the path here occasionally so that you’d have to turn back, because the passage was impossible unless on had high rubber boots on. The lake water was close to the level of the path, but it had not rained hard enough to cause it to flow over. I paused to breathe and to listen to complete silence. I could no longer hear the horse. My ears strained for a moment, perhaps it was a trick. The brief moment of sun began as the fog swirled upwards, closing off my view of the sky once more. The deep sound of a male stranger’s voice broke the silence, causing me to jump. And I’d though I didn’t have anymore nerves left to jangle.

“You are the most stubborn young woman I have ever met.” A low man’s voice proclaimed softly. The voice lingered intimately in my ears and I couldn’t believe that the words weren’t meant exclusively for me.

I said nothing –could say nothing – for the handsomest man I have ever seen walked nonchalantly from the fog into plain view. His eyes were a dark, penetrating brown, framed by dark lashes. His hair a mute blue-black peppered with a scattering of fine silver hairs. He seemed neither too old, nor too young. He was agelessly balanced between perfect maturity and perfect youth.  His features were too symmetrical, my eyes were compelled to search for the flaw, for the variable, the human asymmetry in the overwhelming beauty of him, but there was no flaw to be found, but the lack of one. He was the perfect height, in my eyes, well muscled, but not too much so. His physique was well-balanced. Lithe, all of him perfectly proportioned. His skin was pale, and a trifle blue, but perhaps that was because a moment ago he had been carved marble, now come to life, or perhaps he was cold: for he was completely naked.

I suppose I should have been more surprised, but after being followed about by a monstrous horse for the morning, I merely stared with a pretence of composure, which masked my human confusion, and then it came to me –with a feeling as though someone had just walked on my grave -I knew that the young man and the horse were one and the same.

“What do you want?” I asked, shivering,  though I knew it too, was a foolish question, for I would probably not like the answer.

“I want a kiss from you to warm me, for I am very chilled,” the man replied solemnly, looking at me in the same way the horse had. I shook my head.

“I’d rather get on the horse and share Jimmy’s fate!” I retorted. My sense of mortality had slowly been settling about me all morning, I realized. The fog, my running through a funereal, escaping into the woods and now being in the middle of a fog… I’d slipped sideways off the track of my life and was now somewhere quite strange –and quite likely a departure point from my old life. As I accepted that my doom was quite likely near, I felt little compunction about tempting fate at that moment with more of my stubbornness.

The young man laughed and said that Jimmy had tried to ride the ceffyl y dwr  -the Water Horse- uninvited. As I was being invited my fate would be rather different.

“Am I going to die?” I asked quietly.

…And All the Way Back Again…A Water Horse Tale

By Sarah Haxby

Part Four

The young man did not laugh, though I thought perhaps he should. Instead he looked at me quite earnestly, walking swiftly towards me, to stare me in the eyes as though reading my destiny. Though he was close to me I felt no warmth, but no chill either. I did not fell embarrassed, either, for there seemed to be no need. It was not as if he was human. He had said ceffyl y dwr –a word I recognized from a Welsh folksong I had learned while away. The Water Horse: a creature of myth and the faerie realm. Not one of the nicer denizens of that realm either, the Water Horse was known for carrying people off, usually young women who presumably he drowned. I stared into his eyes, but did not see my fate reflected.

Time must have passed for the golden sun was further faded when at last he spoke again.

“You will not die of me, but I may not tell you your fate until you give me your answer. I have not come all the way from Wales to fetch you back without a’purpose. I may say, though, that myself, and Queen Mab, would like to hear more of your harp playing. If you will come with me we will give you an instrument that will allow you to play as Taliesin once did.” In his eyes I saw the extent and truth of his invitation in the depths of his brown eyes.

If he hadn’t been so earnest, I might have laughed. My five lessons on the harp had been an unskilled beginner’s torment. Through much practice I could now almost pick my way through one song. To play as the greatest Welsh bard and poet once had the talent to play was no small offer… yet I had no sense in me that thought he might be lying. Why would he have come all this way to give me such an offer when there must be others of greater skill, whose ancestry had stayed in Wales instead of spending generations abroad?

I thought about all the reasons he might have chosen me, they did not involve my average looks, but had more to do with my ancestry, and what measure upon the skein of my life he saw when he looked into my eyes. What conditions were placed upon the fairy as to which mortals they could select to take with them into their lands?

The man who was the Water horse held his hand upturned, but not outstretched. He was allowing me my choice. I stepped backwards, away from him. His gaze did not waver.

“Do you not find me handsome?” he asked solemnly, a small sad quirk at one corner of his mouth, but missing from the other side. It reminded me of the off-kilter grin the horse had given as it had chomped unceremoniously through a plate of cucumber sandwiches back at the church hall.

“Oh –go turn back into a horse!” I exclaimed, “you know full well you are impossibly handsome to look at!” I stamped my foot and stepped towards him, as though to shoo him away.

The small sad quirky grin broke into a look of unbridled joy. I couldn’t help but smile back a little.

As he stepped back into the thick mists he warned me that once we began the journey I must not speak a single word. In nodded my head, not caring if he saw or not and tried to listen to his transformation since I would not be allowed to see it that day. I shivered a little, perhaps, as I waited. Perhaps it was just my mortal coil rattling around inside me.

I knew that if I turned and ran now, the road would be only a few paces away, and I could walk home in half an hour. If I ran he would follow me no more, somehow I knew that this was the spot he had come out of the water into this land and that this was where he could go no further from. As I stood where I was, looking into the mist, my back to the road, I knew that the road did not exist, for me, that it was not there unless I wanted it to be there… It was a funny tenuous feeling, as though I was standing on a flummery line dividing my past from my future mortality this was a terminal point at which I could leave my human destiny, and would perhaps leave my humanity, behind.

Later, in the timelessness of the fairy-folk,  after I had learned to speak Welsh as though it were my first language, and could play and sing a tenth as well as the bard Taliesin, though he was no longer there to compare my skills to… I was proud of my accomplishments and had come to take for granted the vast expanse of time that had been gifted to me. Much later I would know that I had made the right decision to journey to the land of the Welsh fey, to live among the timeless mythical race under the ancient hills amongst the standing stones. Much later I would learn that the ceffyl y dwr had been drawn to me by my attempts to learn the harp, at first because he thought it a great joke. He had never laughed so hard as hearing me trying to learn the harp and so had been following my efforts whenever I had played near the water. One day while listening to me he had had a vision of my fate… As my mortality was nigh he had decided to offer me a place in the faerie court. Not seeing my unexpected trip across Canada he had travelled to the place where he saw his fate and mine conjoin. And what of Jimmy? I was sad for Jimmy, perhaps the fates had demanded that some life be taken early to keep the balance between the worlds. Jimmy had charged at his own death, or so it had seemed. If I had stayed in the mortal realm the vision of my untimely death would have been one I would not have chosen…but it was avoided, and indeed the Water Horse was not the death of me.

But I was not to know all of this in that time, when I stood waiting in the fog. The great blue-grey mare, stepped out of the mist, walked into the lake, sinking in with little ripple or splash, to wait for me. I walked over to him where he patiently waited, and awkwardly straddled his great girth. To my surprise I grew no wetter upon his back, and he wasn’t as wide as he had at first seemed and so I would be comfortable enough it seemed, by his magics. My wet rain-jacket was too tight around my shoulders, so I removed it and cast it into the lake waters. The grey Welsh wool cardigan I wore would be warmth enough, and it bended with me as I wound the long mane around my hands and leaned in to hug the Water horse’s neck with my arms. I wanted to ask a hundred questions, but held my tongue –heeding his warning. There would be more than enough time for questions in the future.

The magnificent and powerful horse began to swim through the misty lake waters, like a proud ship. I managed to hold even my gasp within me as we leapt together over the dam and into the river below and then made our way out to the sea and beyond. I hung on tightly, and in that way, eyes open and closed by turns, I travelled to lands only known of in Welsh fairytales and by those who can sense that there is more around them than mere water, earth and air.

——————————- diwedd/fin/end———————————-

the scornful swans

deride

avert tidal influx

sword sharp wings

rudders submerged

fleshy ungainly orange feet

pushing in haste

ship them like royalty

in an appearance of

ivory figure head grace

necks flecked with mud

from searching below

un-mirrored in the grime

each feather a shield just so

under Queen’s protection

-for the swans belong to the Queen-

except for an exceptional few

that go to old guilds by rule

a greater bird

has never risen on the tide

presented as an emblem of grace

only when temper goes untested

each glory has its underside

youth today seem to know

both more and less today, it is true

on this day

a little boy

received a letter

of  gracious apology

from the Queen

when he was bitten in a park

the swan is its own majesty

its sounding does not hark

a better bird could not be found

than this royal feathered shark